


Senescence

by morifiinwe



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Age is Beautiful, Beren loves his wife, F/M, Old Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 20:41:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18373709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morifiinwe/pseuds/morifiinwe
Summary: This is not Doriath, and things will change.





	Senescence

**Author's Note:**

> beta read by the wonderful HerAwesomeShinyness and the lovely elvntari!

**_senescence (noun)_ **

_                               the state of being old; the process of becoming old _

 

i.

He had known, better than she, what she was tying herself to. He had watched this happen to those he loved. She was ageless, deathless, unendingly beautiful, and then she wasn’t. He still asserted her beauty though, all the time, until she laughed and blushed. Sometimes she wondered how he could find her beautiful like this. She was not as she had once been.

“Tinúviel, you could never be anything but beautiful to me.”

It was both strange and familiar to hear that. Lúthien was no stranger to everlasting beauty. It was the surety of her younger years. Everything beautiful in Doriath would last, and so would she, exactly as beautiful as she was.

Beren’s version of everlasting beauty was rooted in change, in the inexhaustible variety of the years. Lúthien may change, but through all the changes, beauty would shine through. The aging of the woman he loved was not something to cover over with flattery and memory. It was something to watch and to marvel over. Her hair greyed, but he would only call it silver starlight. Her keen eyes gathered lines like crow’s feet, and he delighted at how much she laughed. He wielded it as a weapon against her insecurities.

Lúthien found that she too had adopted this vision of beauty. Beren was not so strong and fast as he once was, but he smiled and danced and played with their son, and Lúthien loved him more with every passing moment, not because her husband’s face was any more handsome than before, but because he did the most beautiful things,

Everyone in Doriath said, but few in Doriath remembered, that all beauty comes first from the heart.

 

ii.

Sometimes, Beren worried about his wife. When she had first announced that she had been granted mortality, he had rejoiced, but he had also worried. Lúthien did not truly know mortality, only the bitter taste of death. In the truth, mortality was more than that. It was the slow crawl towards it, it was age showing clear in the lines on your face. It was nothing that Lúthien knew, and Beren avoided thinking about what she would have chosen if she had known.

He would not call her vain, because she wasn’t. She was beautiful, and a princess, surrounded by beautiful people, who made beautiful songs about just how lovely she was. All of them were unchanging, their beauty was unchanging, their ideas about beauty were unchanging. Humans weren’t like that. Beauty was as shifting as the sands.

Beren was knew the beauty of age. Growing up, he heard the men around him discuss how wonderful it would be to have a partner to grow old with. Lives were cut short so often that none of them ever dreamed of finding someone less beautiful for the time they had lived. The others were gone now. They couldn’t grow old in peace with their husband or wife. Lúthien, though, was here with him now, having passed through even death. They were safe and happy and parents and they were growing old together. Sometimes, it made him want to cry.

“Tinúviel, you could never be anything but beautiful to me.”

He told it to her again and again. He loved to watch her smile and blush over it. There was something enchanting about her, there always had been. Beren felt compelled to watch her whenever she passed, and compelled to follow wherever she went. There was an effortless grace to Lúthien, a dancer shining through all of her movements. She had not lost it, despite all the years. Beren did not think she ever would.

They were mortals now, and despite the uncertainty painted over mortal skin, they would endure together, in life, in memory, in dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> please like and comment if you enjoy!


End file.
